So, why a new search engine? Why the new name? Why now? We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.

And features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price – help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.

With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions.

I thought decisions were left for the realm of humans and their superior intelligence. If MS has developed a software that can make decisions for us, they have either a) cracked the holly grail of AI (which all of MIT failed to do for now) b) have had help from MS's CEO from 2158 who used a time-warp-whole to travel back to our time and save MS from bankruptcy. c) have had help from Cyberdine, which is soon about to engage humanity in a struggle for survival

Anyways, enough with the irony: IMHO this is just a search engine (probably live.com) repackaged with some extra tools, that G probably has had for 2 years or more ;)

Now we can ask what Microsoft Bings to the party. And for those of us who are old enough to remember, or who haunt the Christmas-music bins at Cheapo Records, "Bing" will always be associated (for better or for worse) with "Crosby."

This is exactly what I was complaining would happen with Google and the Micro Formats and Rich Snippets.

Bing has already taken it to the next level according to the video, bringing all that information forward bypassing the individual sites, and it'll be interesting to see how long before mashups of this level either a) destroy the very infrastructure they're utilizing or b) cause a massive backlash against crawlers.

While potentially useful for customers, it could also be a sticking point among those whose content it is borrowing from so liberally. Product searches, for example, aggregate both user and professional reviews from various sites directly within the Bing result.

"I don't think we are trying to do something unnatural to have the person stay within the site," (Microsoft's) Brian MacDonald said, adding that in the end the company thinks it will drive more people to the pages it is indexing.

Okay, we all know Microsoft have been fairly quiet these past years, but we've also seen them do some stuff in their labs, those keyword tools in labs, as well as getting involved in some other projects - they snapped up Yapta as part of the predictive forecasting thing they are hinting at here. Always positioned well for MS search and for sure it's nice to another possible search engine in the mix. They've certainly the money and network spread to build a name, if the results are good, but then based on the visitors I'm seing come through results which aren't positioned in the first 3 on Google, indicates to me that Google's suffering more from relevancy issues than it is in its ability to have the biggest database.

About half way through the video someone types in "Digital Cameras" and the results were pure affiliate mumbo jumbo instead of links to other sites about digital cameras.

My take: since Bing offers nothing new (it seems to be a mash of existing services) it's purpose is to BECOME the affiliate instead of linking to affiliate sites.

Bing is a merge of affiliate site and regular search... I don't see this working well.

With such a busy screen, how is anyone going to find ads?

It seems MSN is turning away from display advertising and into affiliate earnings. As I said above, watch the video to see what happens when someone types in "Digital Cameras"... it looked like a page right out of a flyer. Yahoo! is an EPN affiliate now too (on their updated template that not everyone sees)... I see a move away from display advertising right into affiliate income.

edit: Further inspection of the video has me considering keeping MSN the heck away from my content, since it would be used to drive people to their affiliate links instead of mine. Have they thought this through?

Apparently not, 100 camera shops trying to sell the same camera make for the least credible bunch and Bing seems to cut out it's competitors, aka the sites that have people who think running them.

You know what's REALLY funny? We've all been building sites and trying to add additional value to the affiliate portions of those sites so as not to be considered a thin affiliate to search engines... and here comes a search engine that will throw pure affiliate content at visitors. I'm highly not impressed by some parts of that video.

Another thought, anyone can mash search results with affiliate offers and 3rd party reviews to start their own version of Bing (as seen in that video). Did anyone see anything in the video that suggests this could somehow be construed as a decision maker?

Exactly. I'm guessing all the deals have been thrasheed out already. If not, and I owned one, I'd be on the phone to my Microsoft Search Accountant to setup a meeting.

This is like the stuff Google has been showing off in their labs. Collecting data from lots of sources and presenting it to the users. If it takes off affiliates will pretty much get cut out of the equation as MS will go direct to the publisher. Still early days..it ain't even launched yet!

I agree mlemos, PriceGrabber needs to take notice more than Google, actually it looks more like they're using the Shopzilla layout but anyway... splicing together an affiliate site with search results doesn't make it a new beast. old search + old affiliate tactics = we've all seen and ignored this before.

Offering cash backs has proven to attract a most unsavory sort on other sites, I wonder how Bing will handle the abuse. I'm most interested in seeing how bing will handle being their own island in terms of being a source of answers about products while not providing visitors with access to other sites who perform real product reviews.

Further inspection of the video has me considering keeping MSN the heck away from my content, since it would be used to drive people to their affiliate links instead of mine. Have they thought this through?

This is my take as well. I'll have to see how it works in practice, but the more they look like an affiliate site, the more I'll be blocking.

BillyS asked this and I think it needs to be answered: Who would buy an ad here? Sure, some will. But for Bing to click, EVERYONE needs to buy ads here. I don't see that, yet.

They are going after "health" in a big way, which is wise. I think Bing could also be especially compelling in what I call the "geo" market. That is, searches that has to do with a place. Daily newspaper web sites should be concerned about this. Yahoo and Google have strong relationships with the newspapers in most markets, which means that MS is going to show no mercy. This is a smart move on the part of MS.

Everyone talks about how the search results need to be useful. True. They also need to be "compelling." They need to leave you with a positive feeling. I don't get that on Ask.com or Live. Yahoo and Google do that right. I think Bing understands this, from what we have seen so far.

Interesting we're not seeing the usual, "Yea, we need a search alternative to Google" postings here that we usually get when we have news about Ask or some other alternative search engine.